It is known to apply a synthetic resin foil to an edge of a sheet of sheet stock, i.e. paper, paperboard, cardboard or other precut web-like material utilizing a thermal-bonding process and automatic feed of the sheets through the machine. Reference may be had, for example, to the commonly-owned U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,925,144, 3,926,713, and 4,698,114 which describe principles of the feeding of synthetic resin foil strip material, principles of the feeding of the sheets to which the foil strips are to be applied, principles of thermally bonding the foil strips to the sheets and principles of the die-cutting or punching of tabs or the like on such sheets which may be used in the present invention and which represent prior art to the present invention.
There has developed a need for a manually operated, simple and reliable machine which is capable of providing sheets having foil-strip segments straddling an edge of the sheet and bonded to opposite faces thereof only over a portion of that length, the sheet being optionally die-cut so that the portion bearing the foil strip segment defines a projecting tab of the sheet.